Is CMS becoming more open to PTAC recommendations?

Recommendations on potential physician-focused alternative payment models so far have gained little traction with officials at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, but that could be changing.

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At a recent meeting of the Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee (PTAC), Alex Azar, secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services, and Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, attended briefly, according to officials at the American College of Emergency Physicians. ACEP was having its proposal evaluated by PTAC.

Physician organizations have been puzzled as to why federal health officials have yet to approve a physician-developed alternative payment model (APM) under the Quality Payment Program, despite several being recommended by PTAC. In fact, no physician-developed APM has even been sent to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation for further testing and refinement.

ACEP’s model, the Acute Unscheduled Care Model, “provides incentives to safely discharge Medicare beneficiaries from the ED by facilitating and rewarding postdischarge care coordination,” the organizations notes in the model description submitted to PTAC. “The model ensures that emergency physicians who make the decision to provide safe, efficient outpatient care have the necessary tools to support this transformation and are rewarded for their decision making.”

Going into the meeting, the preliminary evaluation report had the PTAC reviewers agreeing unanimously that the model met 7 of the secretary’s 10 criteria for a physician-focused APM, that the majority agreed on the 8th criterion, and a majority agreed that the model did not meet criteria on the remaining two items.

PTAC reviewers “thought that we met all 10 criteria for models that the secretary put forth for evaluating physician-focused payment models,” Jeffrey Davis, ACEP Director of Regulatory Affairs, said in an interview, adding that the attendance of Mr. Azar and Ms. Verma at the meeting was a positive development.

“I think we were especially inspired by the fact that Secretary Azar, Administrator Verma, and Adam Boehler, the new head of [Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation], spoke at the beginning of the PTAC meeting,” he said, adding that while no models have been formally implemented or even designated for testing, they said that ideas are being incorporated into model development going on at the CMS.

Ms. Verma went so far as to tweet that “this group of leading experts volunteer their time to improve our healthcare system, and we greatly value their input.”

“We still think [PTAC] is a great avenue to get our model into the public arena,” Mr. Davis said. “We are optimistic.”